40 Year Itch: Those We Missed from April 1974

[Purchase]On Desitively Bonnaroo, Dr John and producer Allen Toussaint follow up their 1973 hit album In The Right Place with backing by The Meters. This may be the best bass playing George Porter Jr ever put on record ( and that's saying a lot). "Mos' Scocious" remains an all time favorite of mine. How did this not become a hit? In and out of print, Desitively Bonnaroo is desitively the album you must pick up after Gumbo and In the Right Place.[Purchase] ...

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40 Year Itch: Just Like the Wind

[Purchase]I still can't listen to J J Cale without thinking about the many ways Eric Clapton and Dire Straits made millions by borrowing his mellow Tulsa sound. But on to Okie.  Because there were four different recording sessions for this album-- in four different studios-- J J Cale's third album, Okie, lacks the one thing that makes J J Cale "J J Cale" : consistency. The lead off cut has a reggae beat. "Precious Memories" sounds like...

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40 Year Itch: Smooth and Raunchy

[Purchase]   Years before Al Green came around, Willie Mitchell signed Ann Peebles to his Memphis based Hi Records label. Mitchell may have been drawn to her traditional feel for old school R and B but as soon as Al Green began his string of sensual hit singles and albums like I'm Still In Love With You and Call Me, he hoped Peebles would be a female version of Al Green.    It almost happened. The single " I Can't Stand the...

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40 Year Itch: All I Do is Drive Drive Drive

[Purchase]    Ragged Old Flag, released in April of 1974, may be Johnny Cash's most political album. He sings about American disillusionment on the title cut and pollution on "Don't Go Near the Water" ( not to be mistaken for the Beach Boys song from Surf's Up). Having spent the last day and half driving hundreds of miles around the Olympic Coast of Washington State, I'm partial to "All I Do is Drive". But I've always liked Truck Driving...

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40 Year Itch: Another Curtain is Drawn

Pamela was Jim's other half.  The two of them were a perfect combination. I never knew another person who could so compliment his bizarreness.  -Ray ManzarekOn April 26 1974 Jim Morrison's widow Pamela died in her Hollywood apartment of a suspected drug overdose involving heroin. She was 27--the same age as Morrison when he died of a heart attack in 1971. They met in 1965 at the Doors first gig and had an on again off again relationship...

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40 Year Itch : Out of the Oxygen Tent

[Purchase]On April 24, 1974 David Bowie released his eight album, Diamond Dogs. To these ears, it's a bit of a muddled mess. Recorded in a paranoid blizzard of cocaine, the album attempts to pair up songs Bowie had written for a failed musical adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 with songs written in the recording studio. Yes it's got two great Rolling Stones inspired tunes, "Rebel Rebel" and the title cut, but Diamond Dogs is weighed down by...

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40 Year Itch: No Use for Riches

[Purchase]On April 23, 1974 Ronnie Lane introduced his folk rock outfit Slim Chance to the BBC audience of "In Concert". It's an absolute delight.Lane had founded the Small Faces and played with the Rod Stewart version as long as he could stand it. When he left The Faces, he also left all the trappings of rock n roll stardom behind. Probably because he was flat broke. Lane was living in a fortune teller's caravan next to the River Thames in Pete...

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40 year itch: Joni Plays London

On April 22, 1974 Joni Mitchell wrapped up her first 1974 tour with a three night stand at the New Victoria Theatre in London. All of the shows sold out. The final night was filmed by the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test. The performance would air in November.Back in the US her album Court and Spark was making itself at home in the Billboard Top 10 album chart. Among those who attended the show was George Harrison. It was backstage that Harrison...

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40 Year Itch: Your Blue Eyed Horseshoe

[Purchase]In April of 1974, Blue Oyster Cult released their third studio album Secret Treaties, one of my favorite discoveries of the year. Like everybody else I knew "Don't Fear the Reaper" and "Burnin' For You" and , thanks to "Godzilla",  hadn't really bothered to dig much further. That was a big mistake. There is a very good reason why Secret Treaties was named "The Top Rock Album of All Time" in a 1975 Melody Maker Poll of critics. It rocks!Blue...

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40 Year Itch: Reckless Games

The Sweet just don't give fuck. -Brian Connolly, singer [Purchase]With the exception of the catchy "ACDC", about a lovely lass who's just as happy with a girlfriend as she is with a boy,  Sweet dispenses with the cute but loud glam pop sounds that gave them so many UK hits  ("Blockbuster", "Little Willy", "Ballroom Blitz") and re-invents itself as a hard rocking, ready with the righteous riff, don't-give-a-fuck metal machine....

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40 Year Itch : Hardly Daring to Breathe

[Purchase]'I turned on the radio in the car the other day and I thought, 'that's weird, that's Jimi, and I've never heard that track before. And it turned out to be a guy called Robin Trower,' - Eric 'Slowhand' Clapton. Oh yeah, Hendrix was a big influence. There is guitar playing before Hendrix and there’s guitar playing after Hendrix, you know? [Laughs] He’s a giant, a genius. I think we all live in his shadow, even today. I still think he...

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40 Year Itch : Top 20 Soul This Week in 1974

1. MFSB and the Three Degrees : TSOPAfter backing Billy Paul, The Stylistics, The Spinners, The O'Jays and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes on their hits, the studio musicians who made up Mother Father Sister Brother hit pay dirt with the future Soul Train theme "TSOP". And the disco era was born...2. Bloodstone : Outside Woman3. Staple Singers : Touch a Hand, Make a Friend4. James Brown : The Payback5. Earth Wind and Fire : Mighty Mighty6. Barry...

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40 Year Itch: A Peephole in my Brain

[Purchase]Dana Gillespie's Weren't Born A Man album, which received a full page ad in an April 1974  issue of Billboard Magazine features a song David Bowie originally wrote for her. It's called "Andy Warhol" and , yes, it's the same song Bowie recorded for his 1971 album Hunky Dory. This album contains the 1971 version originally cut by Dana with Bowie and his guitarist Mick Ronson producing.A longtime friend, lover and backing vocalist of...

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40 Year Itch: A Shot of Salvation

  On April 15, 1974 The Rolling Stones concert movie "Ladies and Gentlemen The Rolling Stones" made its debut at the Zeigfield Theatre in New York City. The movie shows the Stones at their peak, performing in Texas and at Madison Square Garden during the 1972 American Tour. Originally screened in quadrasonic sound, the movie played limited engagements in select cities (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, Miami, and Los...

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40 Year Itch : Turn It Up

[Purchase]On April 15, 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd released their second album, Second Helping, which featured the band's biggest song ever, "Sweet Home Alabama". Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington admits the song is a response to "Old Neil" Young's songs "Alabama" and "Southern Man":We listened to Neil Young a lot back then, and "Southern Man" really cut the South--and he's from Canada!. It kind of peeved us, so we wrote that kind of as a joke. We never...

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40 Year Itch: They're Weird and They're Wonderful

Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 for April 13, 19741 Elton John Bennie and the JetsWith crowd noises nicked from an Elton John concert in London and Jimi Hendrix's performance at the Isle of Wight, as well as some off beat handclaps, "Bennie and the Jets" gave Elton John his second #1 in the US. He was prouder of the fact the song hit #15 in the R and B charts. One of those few tunes most people could name in one note.2 Blue Swede Hooked on a Feeling3 MFSB...

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40 Year Itch: Suzi Q Tours the US of A

[Purchase]On April 12, 1974 Suzi Quatro opened her US Tour at the Michigan Palace in front of her parents in her hometown of Detroit. She had already become a UK Glam sensation with three #1 hits--none of which did much business in the US. Still, Suzi and her band of Brits had a great time with, as she related in her autobiography Unzipped..."the endless TV Stations, the hamburger and hot dog stands, the malls, the guitar shops ( even better, the...

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40 Year Itch: Oh No, Oh No, Oh No, Oh No

It's not the best film ever made, but I've seen worse.-Ringo Starr [Purchase]   On April 11th, 1974 the soundtrack for the Apple film Son of Dracula was released, eight days before the movie premiered in Atlanta. The movie stars Harry Nilsson who took payment in the form of cosmetic dentistry. It is, by all accounts, abysmal. Ringo Starr financed the whole thing as a tribute to the classic monster movies of Hammer and Universal. He...

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40 Year Itch: I Hear A Symphony

                           [Purchase]    Canterbury art rockers Caravan follow-up one of their finest albums, 1973's For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night, with this live set recorded with the 39-piece New Symphonia Orchestra. Hey, it worked for Procol Harum (whose live album with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra was their top seller) and Deep Purple ( 1969's Concerto...

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40 Year Itch: What the Purists Were Missing

[Purchase]    By April of 1974 Blue Note had released two albums that would challenge Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters for the top spot on the jazz charts. Trumpeter Donald Byrd's Street Lady, his follow-up to the smash hit Black Byrd, sounds like a groovy Blaxploitation soundtrack. There's even some wah wah guitar from David T Walker, who played on Jackson 5 hits. Harvey Mason, who played drums on Head Hunters, finds the pocket on every Street...

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40 Year Itch : The Battle of Billy The Hero

[Purchase]Although it was a song about the American Civil War, "Billy, Don't Be Hero" was written by two Brits, Mitch Murray and Peter Callander. When the Nottingham band Paper Lace won an ITV talent show called "Opportunity Knocks", Murray and Callander had the band record the tune which went to Number One in the UK on March 16, 1974.     As the song climbed the UK charts Murray and Callander desperately tried to get the Paper Lace...

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